LENIN MISCELLANY

4.
Additional questions may be introduced on the day of the session only under the following conditions:
a) in case of absolute urgency (especially diplomatic questions),
b) only in written form,
c) only in those cases where there is no protest from at least one member of the Politburo.
The latter condition regarding non-protest of questions introduced outside the agenda may be disregarded only with respect to diplomatic questions, which cannot admit of any delay whatsoever.

Lenin

3921

FROM A LETTER TO A. D. TSIURUPA
December 9, 1922

Comrade Tsiurupa

Order of Work of the Deputies and the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars

1. Working hours—11—2, 6—9; together with the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars on the days: Monday and Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

2. Special sessions of all deputies and the Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense on these days and at these hours (minus Politburo, Council of People's Commissars, and Council of Labor and Defense) each time there is need, and in general not less than twice a week for one hour. Determine this hour the evening before no later than nine o'clock.

3. All work of the deputies is divided into:
(a) immediate supervision of the work of the Small Council of People's Commissars;
(b) the same—of the work of the executive sessions of the Council of Labor and Defense (it is necessary to restore the executive sessions of the Council of Labor and Defense in order to free the deputies for other, more important work. The executive sessions are chaired not by deputies, but only their signature makes the decisions of these sessions final).
(c) Presiding over those portions of sessions of the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Labor and Defense where the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars does not preside.
(d) Participation in the Finance Committee...
(Perhaps it would be necessary to establish Finance Committee sessions once a week for one hour under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars? This must be thought through).
(e) Determination of the agendas of all institutions, including the Small Council of People's Commissars and the order of questions with singling out of the most important questions by the four of them, under the chairmanship of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

1922


(f) Immediate supervision of individual People's Commissariats and their apparatus both through instructions to the Commissars and their deputies personally and through study of their apparatus both at the top and at the bottom.
(g) For this purpose (point f) the People's Commissariats are distributed among the deputies with the approval of the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

4. All the aforementioned work is distributed among the deputies so that all three of them, and in case of need their assistants from among the office managers, "sit" on definite work for two months, and then exchange it. (This is necessary in the interests of familiarizing all the deputies with the whole apparatus as a whole and in the interests of achieving genuine unity of administration).

5. A draft of such distribution among the three deputies is composed by them immediately and approved by the four of them.

6. Since the work of improving and correcting the entire apparatus is far more important than the work of presiding and chattering with deputy commissars and Commissars, which until now has occupied the deputies entirely, it is necessary to establish and strictly carry out the requirement that not less than two hours a week each deputy "goes to the bottom," devoting himself to personal study of the most diverse, and upper and lower, parts of the apparatus, moreover the most unexpected ones. A protocol of such study, fixed, approved, and communicated (in certain cases) to all departments, must serve to reduce the apparatus and tighten up everyone and everything in our state apparatus.

Lenin

Printed from the typescript original.

10012

RECORD OF A RECEPTION OF I. V. STALIN
December 1922

Stalin 6—7.
